Cantor dings W.H. on jobs bill

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Tuesday took a shot at what he called the White House’s “all-or-nothing” approach on President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, saying that method won’t fly in Congress.

Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, jumped on remarks by strategist David Axelrod, who said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Obama’s American Jobs Act is “not an a la carte menu,” but rather “a strategy to get this country moving.”

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Obama’s “message – all or nothing, take it or leave it – that’s just not the way I think anything works and certainly not the way Washington works,” Cantor said during a jobs summit sponsored by the American Action Forum. “We’ve been there, done that for the last eight months.”

“That’s not the spirit which I think the people of this country would like to see us go forward,” Cantor said of Axelrod’s comments.

White House economic adviser Gene Sperling told reporters just before Cantor’s speech that while the administration prefers the jobs plan be passed in one package, the president wouldn’t reject it if the legislation reached his desk in pieces. And White House press secretary Jay Carney echoed those comments, saying the president would sign what he gets from Congress and then push to pass the rest.

Since Obama outlined his jobs plan to a joint session of Congress last Thursday, Republican congressional leaders have said they may take parts of his bill that could pass a divided Congress and push them through.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have said they preferred it to be one comprehensive package. And liberal Democrats, in particular, have fretted that the measures that could pass the GOP-led House would be the exact ones they oppose.

House Republicans have struck a tone of cooperation with the White House on the issue of job creation in recent days. But Cantor, during his roughly 15-minute address, listed several components of the administration’s jobs plan that Republicans object to.

Cantor balked at the “stimulus spending” in the bill, asking the crowd, “Why would we want to go do something like that again?” He also criticized Obama’s plan to pay for the $447 billion package, which includes raising taxes on the high-income earners.

“Looking at the impact of his policies … what you see is a tax on the very people you expect and want to create jobs,” Cantor said.